Grants and Contributions

This project aims to provide institutional support to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), a leading global health research centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Icddr,b’s mandate is to find low-cost, innovative solutions to public health problems facing low- and middle-income countries through scientific research. This project supports icddr,b’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan.

Project activities include: (1) developing research and scaling up icddr,b’s innovations; (2) delivering free health care, especially for women and children; (3) and strengthening icddr,b’s operations through investment in research technologies, human resources development, and initiatives to improve its effectiveness, efficiency, and long-term viability.

This project aims to provide institutional support to the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), a leading global health research centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Icddr,b’s mandate is to find low-cost, innovative solutions to public health problems facing low- and middle-income countries through scientific research. This project supports icddr,b’s 2023-2027 Strategic Plan.

Project activities include: (1) developing research and scaling up icddr,b’s innovations; (2) delivering free health care, especially for women and children; (3) and strengthening icddr,b’s operations through investment in research technologies, human resources development, and initiatives to improve its effectiveness, efficiency, and long-term viability.

This project aims to improve sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes and the realization of rights among different population groups with distinct SRH needs in Bangladesh. This project identifies gaps in current SRH service provision and assesses the SRH target groups' unmet needs through research. These groups include adolescent boys and girls, pregnant women and newly married couples and people with distinct SRH needs, women in the ready-made garments sector, sex workers, people with diverse sexual orientations and drug users. The project designs, develops and implements several inventions and innovations that include: (a) increasing knowledge and evidence regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) burden, needs, risk factors, service gaps and challenges; (b) identifying interventions/innovations to promote prevention and protection and improve treatment (accessibility, availability, readiness and quality); and (c) increasing capacity for the use of the evidence generated through SRHR research in national policy and practice.

Project activities include: (1) establishing cohorts with population groups with distinct SRHR needs in selected rural and urban areas; (2) estimating SRH-related disease burden, risk factors and outcomes in different populations with distinct SRH needs; (3) understanding COVID-19-related susceptibility, role in transmission dynamics and clinical outcomes in different populations with distinct SRH needs and vulnerability; (4) assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the behaviour, practice and health of different populations with SRH distinct needs; (5) setting up invention and innovation hubs through selective inventions and innovations designed, developed and tested for promoting prevention and protection and for improving treatment; (6) conducting research prioritisation exercise for promoting prevention and protection and for improving treatment; (7) establishing a health facility network of selective public and private facilities providing SRHR services; (8) assessing the service availability, accessibility, readiness and quality of essential SRHR services in selective public and private facilities; (9) tracking the trend and pattern of SRHR service utilisation and case-mix in selective public and private facilities; and (10) creating SRH interest group, developing short course on SRHR programs and research.

P001405001: This grant represents Canada’s long-term institutional support to icddr,b, formerly known as the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. icddr,b uses these funds, along with other donors’ funding to achieve its mandate.

icddr,b’s mandate is to find low-cost innovative solutions to public health problems facing low- and middle-income countries through scientific research. icddr,b’s research and health services contribute to the well-being of women and girls in the area of disease prevention and control (including cholera vaccines administered to Rohingya refugees), sexual and reproductive health and rights, prevention and treatment of malnutrition, prevention of child marriage, and the first population-based research on gender-based violence in Bangladesh. As part of icddr,b’s ‘Core Donor Group’ (Canada, UK, Sweden), Canada’s funding is supporting the delivery of free health care, especially for women and children, and strengthening icddr,b’s operations through investment in research technologies, human resources development, and initiatives to improve icddr,b’s effectiveness, efficiency, and long-term viability.
P001405002: The proposed project would provide 5 years of institutional support to icddr,b, a leading global health research centre located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The institutional support would include capital investments in improved research technologies, develop human resources, and enable the organization to pursue its strategic research agenda to produce evidence of effective low-cost health solutions, including in SRHR. icddr,b’s mandate is to find low-cost innovative solutions to public health problems facing low- and middle-income countries through scientific research. The five main areas of icddr’b’s work are: 1) innovative research to identify low-cost solutions to public health problems in poor countries; 2) implementation and scale-up of proven public health interventions; 3) policy impact through delivering evidence for effective health strategies and policy interventions; 4) humanitarian action (including hospitals and laboratories, disease outbreak responses and training); and 5) the Matlab Demographic Surveillance site, the world’s most comprehensive and longest running longitudinal population study, which is also a testing ground for research on global vaccines, community health care delivery, reducing maternal mortality and malnutrition, the identification of emerging diseases, and the effects of environmental and socio-cultural factors on health.
The additional activities to be undertaken by icddr,b to combat COVID-19 are: training healthcare workers treating COVID-19 patients in Bangladesh; strengthening testing capacity for COVID-19 in 10 districts in Bangladesh; conducting clinical trials for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 with drug and vitamin regimes for front-line workers and at risk populations, and treatment for those unable to access standard treatment; treatment of COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia by trialing an adaptive version of locally made mechanical ventilator; assessing case management capacity of public health care services regarding COVID-19; assessment of food insecurity and undernutrition among urban and rural people during and after the pandemic in Bangladesh and development of a guideline for providing them a basic food package for maintaining daily dietary requirements to combat undernutrition.